Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Yes. It was just a wonderful life.
It was well after dark when Cesare pressed on my apartment buzzer. He came in, his face stormy, but his clothes clean and pressed. That in itself was a bit of a surprise. But at least his presence meant he could deal with Matteo and his incessant pacing and griping instead of me.
“Tell me,” Cesare ordered when he was barely through the door. “Though I can’t even imagine what couldn’t wait until the morning.” Anger was his default mode, but even considering that, he looked mad. It made me wonder what he’d been doing when Matteo called.
“Don’t look at me, man,” I said, throwing my buddy under the bus. “He’s the one who came in here all worked up.”
Cesare turned to his cousin. “What the hell happened?”
Matteo paused by the window and looked out over the dark street, as if expecting a goon squad to attack. “We’ve got problems, Cesare. They’re onto us.”
“So?” Cesare squinted. “We figured they must be, since they had backup.”
“It’s more than that. They know exactly what our plans are.”
“How?” I asked, at the same time Cesare said, “Who?”
“I was at Amanda’s, and this hot chick approached me,” Matteo began. I wanted to make a joke, like how hot chicks usually chose me over him, but the look on his face kept me silent.
“Who was she?” Cesare demanded.
“Maggie Owens-Roselli. Recognize the name?”
“The Roselli part,” Cesare said, and I nodded, because I did, too.
“I asked around this morning,” Matteo said. At Cesare’s sharp look, he added, “Discreetly. And here’s the thing. Maggie’s the illegitimate child of Emilio Roselli. When his son fell to his death, she inherited his fortune and changed her name.”
“So, she’s the head of the Roselli family now,” Cesare concluded, running his fingers through his hair. “I hadn’t heard.”
That didn’t surprise me. Well, that Cesare hadn’t known that. We kept to ourselves as much as possible because we ran our own organization. We were our own bosses. But yeah, I guess it was a little surprising that a young woman was the head of a crime family now.
“What did she want?” I asked.
“To warn us off. She knew that you had gotten hurt and how. Told us that if we tried again, one of us is going to get killed.”
“So it’s her truck?” I asked. “I mean, that’s clearly a threat, right?”
Cesare shook his head. “Or just a warning. You know how those old families are. Always so concerned about doing things the proper way.” All three of us knew that the way Cesare was referring to was outside of normal societal rules. But still, the mafia had a code. Usually.
“It had to be the guy we didn’t take care of,” Matteo said. “After the failed heist. He must’ve told her everything.”
Due to my injuries, I didn’t have all the details of what had gone down that night, but I’d learned that the backup car had had three men in it. Two were no longer a problem.
“There are other ways she could’ve found out,” Cesare mused before addressing Matteo. “You were careful when you looked into her?”
“Of course,” he said, resuming pacing with his long legs. Must be nice to be able to move without wincing in pain. “It wasn’t even hard. That chick’s face all over the internet. She’s told her life story to like a dozen mainstream media. She’s thrown a truckload of fundraisers ever since she took over.”
“Fundraisers?” I echoed. “The mob is holding bake sales now?”
“No, she used some of the Roselli money to open some kind of domestic violence shelter.”
Cesare frowned. “This Maggie clearly doesn’t know how to run a family.”
“Or she does, but she’s doing things her own way anyway,” Matteo countered.
“So was it her truck?” Cesare asked.
“No way,” I interjected. We’d done a shit ton of research before we planned the heist. “It was casino money. It was clean—or as clean as that kind of cash gets.”
“I thought so, too, but maybe we were wrong.” Matteo ran a hand through his dark hair. “Which means that if we try to hit the truck again, we may not know how we’re really targeting. Which is dangerous as fuck.”
“Maybe that’s what Maggie was trying to warn you about,” I said.
Cesare’s eyes were even darker than usual while he thought it over. “If it is mob money, we’re already on their shit list.”
“Yeah, but we’ll be a whole lot higher on that list if we actually succeed next time,” Matteo pointed out, and he wasn’t wrong.
“We knew how risky this was when we decided to do it in the first place,” I said.
“But now there are more players involved,” Cesare said.
Matteo nodded. “Including local ones.”
Cesare was unperturbed. “We’re trying to steal a piece of the pie for ourselves. What the hell did you think was going to happen? That the mob would just welcome us with open arms?”